Matroos / Sailor (1998) 

Runtime:...........16 min
Genre:.............Short, Fantasy 
Director:..........Bavo Defurne
Writer:............Bavo Defurne
Stars:.............Joram Schurmans, Tom de With and Tim Peters 
Country:...........Belgium
Year:..............1998
Language:..........Dutch 

Synopsis:

A teenager adores his sailor friend. He dreams about the exotic countries, marvelous starry skies and the inevitable homesickness that would bring his friend back to him. In a colorful series of mythical referential images, his fragile dreams get so unreal, that the enthusiasm for seeing his friend again turns into anxiousness.

Review:

This is a candy colored, stunningly photographed wordless romance between a young man living in Belgium and a Dutch sailor or 'matroos'. The man in Belgium is played by Joram Schurmans, who is called Joram Roodhooft. The sailor is played by Tom de With, who uses his own name for the role. Some have compared the look of the film to the work of the French photographers Pierre et Gilles, and there is a lot of that hot house atmosphere and those saturated colors here, but the look of the film, I would say, is more like the initial, nonsexual scenes in a Tom of Finland comic book--stalwart, stunningly handsome young naïfs in a clean-lined 1950s world.

A lot of the scenes are clearly filmed against a green screen or a back projection. And other scenes are clearly in beautiful sets. It is beautiful and theatrical, like a more delicate version of 'Querelle'. The boys kiss on the beach, two stunningly handsome young men. As the sailor travels to 
exotic climes, such as Ecuador, they send to one another an erotically suggestive tropical flower, and then, over and over, the same chocolate bar.

In the end, when they feel they must go their separate ways, drifting apart and fearful of the world in which they live, the scenes take place very much in the real world, at a dock and its attendant sheds. Yet the look of the film--the colors and the grain of the film stock, look like authentic 1950s documentary footage--real yet artificial, still beautiful.


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Kampvuur / Campfire (1999)

Runtime:........21 min
Genre:..........Short
Country:........Belgium 
Language:.......Dutch 
Subtitles:......English
Director:.......Bavo Defurne
Writer:.........Bavo Defurne
Stars:..........Joram Schurmans, Koen Van Heule and Circé Lethem 
Year:...........1999
Details:........https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244577/

Synopsis:

Short about a camping trip for scouts where a boy falls in love with his best friend 
and causes tension in the scouting group. 

Review:

Campfire is basically a coming out story, but essentially it summarizes many itches of love and relations. Settings, sound, music are all economically used, but without being minimal and boring. Cinematography is brilliant, and so is acting. All in this is a short but not small, powerful but not cliché film. 
Simply beautiful.

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